Get out of my city, Jerks

This week was interesting, to say the least. Monday, I brought in cookies to my class. They were peanut butter chocolate chip-my mama’s recipe. It was a gesture of friendship and I pulled it off quite well. I got invited to my friend Beibei’s for dinner with a couple others. It was nice because there Anti-Americanism is starting to run heavy in Lyon due to many of the political and educational decisions. I’m glad people are looking beyond that with me.

To explain further, some of the strikes at the public school are happening due to changes that will turn the socialized education system more “capitalistic.” My friend Kathryn, who is an obvious candidate to be a victim of Anti-Americanism with her short blonde hair, got spit on when trying to get to class this week while the students shouted, “They’re trying to turn us into you!” She was pretty disturbed. For the most part, the French have showed no signs of anti-Americanism up to this point. It’s been mostly the international students at the Catholic University who have provided those problems for me.

Tuesday night, salsa night, my friend Ima Young (yep, you can laugh at that one) who is from Korea and Y Chang, Taiwan, came out with us. It was a lot of fun but I think they were having fluidity problems. And there was one step that the professor tried to teach him for half an hour and he just stood, terrified. I would say I felt bad, but watching his discomfort made my evening wonderful. Yeah, I’m a jerk.

Wednesday, I finally got to see the new Bob Dylan movie. All new movies are released on Wednesdays in France because the kids don’t have school. Fortunately for me, I rarely ever go see movies that would be popular and thus, despite the fact that it was the first showing, there were like 5 other people in the Theatre. The music was amazing—especially Calexico’s cover of “Goin’ to Acapulco” and Antony and the Johnson’s cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s door.” Performances were strong, but the Richard Gere parts seemed really forced. Overall, it was excellent. It got horrible reviews in France—which is to be expected because there are years and years of American music history packed into the movie, along with subtle political references. Additionally, a decent grasp of Dylan’s discography is needed to really appreciate the order of things.

I'm Not There

Thursday marked the beginning of the Fete de Lumieres, (The festival of lights). It also marked the beginning of me being really frustrated with tourists.

It’s really popular. In fact, people come from all around Europe to come check out our cool light festival, which is literally the span of the entire city with different events that go from Thursday night to Sunday night. Because of this event, (which is totally awesome by itself), the metros were free and millions of people flooded the streets of Lyon. At the same time, someone thought it would be a good idea to start going on strike. So, with slow metros and millions of strangers in my city, I had to wait nearly a half an hour to get on the stupid metro. What normally takes me about 15 minutes is now taking me 45 minutes. GET OUT OF MY CITY, JERKS. I pay to use that metro and you are just trashing it and slowing it down.

Okay, now that I got that out of the way. Thursday night, I went out with a large group of people to see the fete. There was a lot of stuff to see, namely a gigantic ball of color that was flooded with light from every direction, making the surrounding buildings really beautiful and colorful. In the Croix Rousse neighborhood, there were green bulbs in the streetlights, surrounded by red Christmas lights lining lots of trees. There has also been the most enormous Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen staked out in Lyon for the past couple days. In Bellecour, they turned the statue of Louis XIV into a giant snow globe, with fake snow being blown around inside and falling down on top of him. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was one of his final requests.

The Opera House

Hotel de Ville


Place de Terreaux

Place de Terreaux

Cordelliers


Ferris Wheel in Bellecour

Louis XIV Snow globe

Rue Victor Hugo

Place Carnot

Croix-Rousse

Rue de la Republique

Moving Industrial Exhibit

Guillotiere, river-side

Bellecour, river-side

I walked way too far on Thursday night and didn’t get much sleep for Friday. Needless to say, my body completely shut down from Friday night to Saturday night. I went home early on Friday night because I was tired and I ached everywhere. I slept until 11, ate a little food, and stayed in bed until 5 on Saturday. I finally feel rejuvenated though after getting some much needed rest. I’ve been pushing myself a little hard in the physical realm because I just want to see this city so much; I am walking nearly half of my day away outside. I can still do that, but I really need to proceed with caution.

Saturday, I went to Beibei and An’s house for dinner. There was sushi and spicy Chinese fondue. It was the first time I had tasted spice in nearly 4 months and it was so HOT. But it was absolutely wonderful and it was good to share stories with others about our country at home.

SPICY

Yi-wen, An

Stupid American with a fork, Yi-wen, An, Beibei

Afterwards, we went out for the Fete and there were even more people out on Saturday than there were on Thursday. It took forever to get anywhere. However, it was really nice to hang out with everyone and just walk slowly. Since I had already seen everything Thursday night, I wasn’t in any rush.

Me and Yi-wen

Today (Sunday) will also be very relaxed. I’m going to go for a walk in the park, but I’ll keep it short. I will be pacing myself in the next couple days.

Hope that the Christmas season is bringing cheer wherever you are, my friends. Much love.

A Beaujolais weekend

Sure, I drink lots of wine in France. That goes without saying—it’s hard to go a day without having a glass when most restaurants serve it with lunch and dinner. It seems almost king of silly to me, at this point, to think that it might be strange to order a glass of wine with lunch back in the states. It will be a hard habit to kick.

However, that being said, the past few weekends have been wine crazy. Allow me to explain. Almost every weekend here in Lyon, there is some crazy event going on. For the past couple weeks, there have been celebrations of the new Beaujolais harvest. Beaujolais, as you might have guessed, is a region in France that is right above Lyon. The wine, by all accounts, is horrible. It’s often sweet, yet dry. The consistency is nothing to write home about… it’s not my cup of tea. That being said, the French hate Beaujolais. But there is one redeeming quality of the wine: it’s cheap. Yes, it’s remarkably cheap and that means it will be popular amongst at least one group of people: the capricious youth.

So, pretty much every university and international organization has had some sort of Beaujolais release party in the past two weeks. I’ve been to three now—but probably the best Beaujolais stories were created this weekend.

Friday night, I got dragged to what I suspected was going to be an awkward wine and cheese party by one of my Japanese friends. However, for a 6 euro ticket, one could drink as much wine as they could handle and eat plenty of cheese. Additionally, there was a Rockabilly group that performed live. It was quite funny because they were French and their lead singer was doing his damnedest to pronounce the “H” in “Hey, everybody.” Needless to say, there is not enough wine in the Beaujolais region to make this evening not awkward, so we did our best.

What started out as an evening debating over cinematic genius (the source of the argument was over Fellini and Goddard), turned into a wild dance party. After a few glasses of wine, we were up there singing “around the clock tonight” and plenty of old Johnny Cash tunes. It was clear that to the rest of the crowd that we were Americans and we appreciated people trying hard to recreate our music history.

I left that night quite satisfied with my dose of Americanism. I went to Salsa with Amy. We sat and talked a bit, danced a few rounds and headed home. We had a long day to follow.

Saturday, I met up with nearly everyone in the Oregon group to go on a trip to the Beaujolais region itself to check out some vineyards and talk with some horticulturists. They taught us how to examine wine (if you would like to recreate this scenario, I would suggest watching sideways in French), and fed us some specialties of the region—including the most magnificent fresh bread. They all sent us home with a loaf, too.

The farm area was gorgeous. It was a dark and cloudy day, and in the valleys, the vines were clouded in a thick fog. I desperately wanted to play hide and go seek—but many of my American companions deemed this too elementary of an idea. So, in lieu of running around a vineyard, I enjoyed the subtle pleasure of pressing the warm soft bread against my face. It smelled like an unsalted pretzel. It was wonderful!

Finally, we returned back to Lyon in the early evening. A bunch of us met up in my friend’s apartment to watch some American Television and enjoy some Ile Flotante (a special French dessert that I discovered a few weeks ago).

The weekend was nice and slow-paced compared to the past few weekends. I’ve managed to get home at a decent hour every night! The rest of the week has been nice, too. I started watching La Maison Blanche (The West Wing). I believe it’s the fifth season I’m watching. It doesn’t interest me too much, but it reminds me of a good friend back in St. Louis. I think she’ll be happy to know I’m watching it.

Things are remarkably wonderful in France. Everything is Christmas-lit right now, in preparation for a grand celebration next week. There is a large festival of lights that goes all night long next week and the entire city stays out to look at the animation projected on large walls, etc. The metros have replaced their lights with pink and blue bulbs to prepare for it. Christmas is in the air and I’m getting excited to see my family.

I hear my host mom calling for lunch, so I must leave you here my friends. I miss all of you during this season, but I wish you good luck near finals and lots of relaxation with your loved ones. Ciao!